Any great work of art... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air. (Leonard Bernstein)

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there. (Alain de Botton)

A great work of art is that which moves and touches one's spirit and adds to one's experience of the world, but does not impose on one's values. It lets one take from it what one wants or needs. (Maritza Burgos)

If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the river of greatness is always the stream of adversity. (Robert Cavett)

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same. (Chuck Close)

To some, art is a trite and trivial activity in these times of war and intolerance, yet if all human beings functioned on the level of self-awareness and ego-less meditation that brings about great works of art and self-discovery, there would be no space for
violence and hate... all things in life would be seen as they truly are; beautiful. (Ian Factor)

The great art includes much that the small art excludes: humor, pain and evil. Much that is repulsive when alone becomes beautiful in its relation. To find the ennobling relation is the task of life and art. (Oscar W. Firkin)

The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing. (Michael Gerber)

All great artists were consumed by their suffering and obsessed by their subject - they learned how to turn not only their talents, but their faults and failings into fuel for their work. (Margot Hattingh)

What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being. (Bert Hellinger)

Great art has no nationality. We know that Goya was Spanish, Da Vinci was Italian, and Rembrandt was Dutch. But we don't think of them first as the Dutch painter or the Spanish painter anymore than Picasso or Matisse... Chagal and Soutine were Russian but lived in France. DeKooning was Dutch and came to NY in his forties. Who cares? They transcend their origins. (Jeffrey Hessing)

I believe that the great painters, with their intellect as master, have attempted to force the unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom. (Edward Hopper)

The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation. (George Inness)

Our biggest challenge with our inherent potential for greatness might be that too often we unconsciously fear it because we have not conditioned ourselves for what greatness may bring. (Dennis Merritt Jones)

The artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and 're-embody' it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for it in its new office, he was the supreme artist. (James Joyce)

The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle. (Carl Gustav Jung)

Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. (Robert F. Kennedy)

Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Great paintings are simple in concept. They have one essential visual idea about color, shapes, values, edges, alone or in combination. These are things that paint can do. The idea or visual concept creates a relationship between objects. (David Leffel)

I found so-called great art too pompous, too stiff. What at this time was called minor art was freer, more imaginative, more open to all kinds of unorthodox expression, all kinds of daring in the handling of materials, and I preferred to surround myself with this type of art than with the great collectors' pieces. I had always in my mind that I was collecting for learning. (Jacques Lipchitz)

Great art... is the result of the labours of thousands of faithful craftsmen who know that they are doomed to remain for ever outside the gates of the Paradise of Perfection, but who nevertheless will give the very best there is in them because the work they do means more to them than anything else in this world. (Hendrik Willem van Loon)

No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao-Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes. (Henry Miller)

The strange quality of expectation that hovers over muted things... I must try to get hold of the great and simple beauty of all that. In general, I must strive for the utmost simplicity united with the most intimate power of observation. That's where greatness lies. (Paula Modersohn-Becker)

Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator. (Amedeo Modigliani)

Real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility. (Henri Nouwen)

I don't know what motivated the artist, which means that the paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension,' the thing that makes great works of art great. (Gerhard Richter)

Do continue to believe that with your feeling and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Nobody cares much at heart about Titian, only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they. (John Ruskin)

We incline to think that a great painting is like an earthquake – something that makes itself felt at once and over a wide area – whereas it could be better likened to a murder or an act of love: a private episode that may be discovered 20 years later or not at all. (John Russell)

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me. (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Picasso was a great naturalistic painter, and he fully absorbed what constituted great artwork. Then he departed from it completely. The great artists don't reject anything; they simply use it as their starting point. (Dan Sullivan)

I was sorry to hear my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself. (Mark Twain)

As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity - no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others. (Edward Weston)

Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self. (Alfred North Whitehead)

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true. (Woodrow Wilson)

Let the standard of everybody's mind be raised to the heights of his own inner glory and then man will feel for himself the greatness of the higher values of life and would be tempted to bring them down into practical life and live them. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

A vandal is somebody who throws a brick through a window. An artist is somebody who paints a picture on that window. A great artist is somebody who paints a picture on the window and then throws a brick through it. (The New Yorker)